Why This Nostalgia For Fruits of Chaos?

By SHEILA MELVIN and JINDONG CAI

Published: October 29, 2000

SHANGHAI—
THE Communist Party of China is like the bright sun,'' sang Granny Sha, her face glowing through wrinkles of sorrow as she told of abuse at the hands of a ''poisonous snake, bloodsucker'' landlord in Kuomintang-ruled China. Her words, soaring and elongated in the lyrical gymnastics of Beijing opera, were punctuated by a roar of applause from the audience in the Yifu Theater here. ''Without the party, my whole family would have been wiped out long ago,'' she concluded, joined by many audience members, spontaneously singing along.

When the aria ended, Granny Sha beamed beatifically at a rosy-cheeked People's Liberation Army soldier, and the audience settled back to watch the crimes against her avenged in ''Shajiabang,'' the first of eight ''revolutionary model operas,'' which dominated China's stages, screens and airwaves to the virtual exclusion of all else during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976.

But while the scene onstage closely resembled a Cultural Revolution-era performance, the audience members -- mostly middle-aged and stylishly dressed, casually taking cell-phone calls, slurping Cokes and licking ice cream bars as the opera proceeded -- were decidedly Shanghai 2000. Although the ostensible reason for mounting ''Shajiabang'' was the 55th anniversary of the victory over the Japanese in World War II, tying the performance to this occasion was merely an excuse, an imaginative means of forestalling criticism by the many Chinese intellectuals who think model operas should be relegated to the dustbin of history.

The term ''model opera'' is a loose one, referring to two sets of ''model'' musical and theatrical works that include ballet, symphony and a reformed version of Beijing opera. As highly visible relics of an era that is officially condemned -- a 10-year period of chaos in which much of China's traditional culture was destroyed and countless artists and intellectuals were humiliated, tortured, jailed and killed -- model operas are understandably controversial. Condemnation of the Cultural Revolution is absolute not only because of the terror and havoc it wrought but also because this is the most effective means for the Communist Party to close the book on a chapter of its history that it would rather everyone forgot.

Yet model operas, though inextricably linked to this tragic era, have become popular crowd pleasers and are performed with increasing regularity as the Cultural Revolution itself fades into the past. Unofficially forbidden in the immediate aftermath of the 10 years of chaos, model Beijing opera excerpts were first performed again in the late 1980's. The model ballets -- ''The Red Detachment of Women'' and ''The White-Haired Girl'' -- are now bread-and-butter repertory for the Central Ballet and the Shanghai Ballet, which often take them on the road and even perform them overseas.

A revival of the model symphonies has lagged behind, because they are hard to present -- they include huge choruses, traditional Chinese instruments and Beijing opera singers -- and because classical musicians suffered so much during the Cultural Revolution that many virulently oppose them. But as old musicians retire, such opposition diminishes, and this fall the Shanghai Symphony and the Shanghai Radio Symphony are both devoting concerts to excerpts from model symphonies and ballet suites.

AS the number of performances increases, so do attempts to analyze the artistic value of this genre created expressly to serve politics.

''Naturally, this is sensitive,'' said Wang Renyuan, a Nanjing-based professor who wrote a book on the music in model operas. ''We oppose the Cultural Revolution now, so of course products from then are also criticized. But model operas were very special, and we can't just ignore them. If we say the Cultural Revolution was politics raping art, then we shouldn't still be doing this today. Criticize the Cultural Revolution, criticize Jiang Qing, but why can't we analyze model operas artistically?''

Model operas were the brainchild of Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong's third wife, who became infamous as the leader of the Gang of Four, which in turn is blamed for most of the evils of the Cultural Revolution. Herself a former actress, Jiang was obsessed with the idea of creating a new form of proletarian art to replace traditional Western and Chinese performing arts like ballet, symphony and, especially, Beijing opera. She and her husband felt that Beijing opera perpetuated feudal bourgeois ideology with what Mao called ''kings and ministers, talented scholars and beautiful women, monsters and demons.'' Using her clout as Mao's wife, Jiang pushed for a new form of opera based on revolutionary themes.

''It is inconceivable that in our socialist country, led by the Communist Party, the dominant position on the stage is not occupied by the workers, peasants and soldiers, who are the real creators of history and the true masters of our country,'' she wrote in a 1964 essay, ''On the Revolution of Beijing Opera.''

Sheila Melvin is a freelance writer who until recently was based in Shanghai and now lives in Baton Rouge, La. Jindong Cai conducts at Louisiana State University and is a regular guest conductor of the Shanghai Symphony.